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John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Last year, I posted a healthcare IT Christmas Wish list. A year later, I thought it would be fun if I got what I wanted for Christmas last year or not (yes, it takes healthcare at least a year to grant wishes).

Here’s the list and my thoughts on how far we’ve come on each wish:

1. Open EHR Systems – We’re certainly not there yet, but I think there has been a sea change when it comes to opening up EHR software. I’m sure some could appropriately argue that we still have a long way to go, but let me give you some examples from Epic that give me cause for hope. First, this Epic Interoperability chart that Judy shared. Second, Kaiser joined the Epic network. Third, the Epic API.

It’s fun to use Epic as a proxy for openness because they’ve been so closed for so long. Judy Faulkner was after all the one that suggested that open EHR was an issue for patients. I’d love to see EHR more open, but I’m excited by the possibilities of open EHR. I believe this will have to happen and vendors who fight against it will be left behind.

2. Remove Healthcare’s Perverse Incentives – Sadly, I’ve seen almost no change to this yet. One area where I think this could be starting to change is around price transparency. There’s been a strong push to make healthcare pricing more transparent. As more and more patients have high deductible plans (like me), we start to shop around a lot more and be more interested in price. When we’re footing the bill, that price translates to our cost. This will cause companies to change how they do business.

3. Beautiful EHR User Interfaces – I’ve seen very little change in this regard. Sure, a few have rolled out an iPad interface, but I think they’ve missed out on the iPad Opportunity. Although, I recently saw the Modernizing Medicine iPad interface again in person. It’s so fundamentally different than every other EHR interface I’ve seen. While it demonstrates well the opportunity, it’s so fundamentally different that I’m not sure any existing EHR vendors can replicate it. I ask myself if we’ve spent billions of dollars on EHR user interfaces that can’t be what they should become.

4. More Empowered and Trusted Patients – I’m sure we’ll be battling this one for a long time to come. Although, the empowered patient is happening. Health information is available to everyone at the click of the mouse or a swipe of the finger. This shift is going to happen. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it. It’s more a question of whether people will embrace it or “kick against the pricks.”

Overall I’d say that we’re generally trending towards my wish list, but as is usually the case there is plenty more to do. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the above items.

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